[Toby Lowe mentioned this to me today and I notice that Tony Korycki is covering the same topic in the ‘warmup’ session at the SCiO open day on Monday:
so this seemed a good time for some core links]
https://www.systemspractice.org/resources/critical-social-learning-systems-inquiry-case-study-and-some-learning
Critical Social Learning Systems: an inquiry, case study and some learning
September 2022
Tony Korycki
https://thebrentc.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-hawkesbury-model-critical-social.html
Sunday, January 22, 2017
The Hawkesbury model: critical social learning systems
At Hawkesburg College in Australia, Bawden et al. explored rural issues experientially while studying these theoretically, in parallel. This is an example of praxis, and developed the critical social learning tradition (CSLS). They “synthesised many systems-related ideas”, demonstrating a multi-perspective approach (Blackmore, 2010, p. 35).
Key characteristics of the Hawkesbury tradition;
“Essentially”, a systemic approach (Bawden, 2009, in Blackmore, 2010, p. 39).
(see also “deeper structural causes”, Woodhill, 2002, in Blackmore, 2010, p. 58).
An explicit epistemology; valuing different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing
An ethical dimension, based on a critical focus (cf. critical theory)
Systemic praxis; systemic being
(Blackmore, 2010, p. 36).
[and] “wholeness” and “complex messiness”; holistic “systemic well-being” (Blackmore, 2010, p. 97); including “wholeness through ‘tensions of difference'” (Blackmore, 2010, p. 41).
[and] “self-referential”; a learning process that appreciates itself (as well as the matter at hand); the “systemic development of systemic development” ((Bawden, 1999, in Blackmore, 2010, pp. 43, 40).
[and] “meaning as an emergent property”; from the interactions of different ways of knowing / processes of learning (Bawden, 1999, in Blackmore, 2010, pp. 44-)
[and] emphasis on social or collective learning (Bawden, 2009, in Blackmore, 2010, p. 89).
[and] self-transformation (of our worldviews, our “epistemes” aka Foucalt) (cf. Bawden, 2009, in Blackmore, 2010, pp. 95-); self-critical ability (Bawden, 2009, in Blackmore, 2010, p. 93).
development of “systemic competencies” (Bawden, 1999, in Blackmore, 2010, p. 91);
https://www.academia.edu/36917658/An_introduction_to_Critical_Social_Learning_Systems
An introduction to Critical Social Learning Systems
Ras Albert Williams
This briefing paper is written for the attention of Ambassador Edward Lambert, who is the senior advisor to the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Dominica, Hon Dr Roosevelt Skerrit (Dominica, G. (2016). Ambassador Lambert is Dominica’s non-resident ambassador to the Holy See (Dominica News Online. 2015). He also sits on the Climate Resilience Execution Agency of Dominica’s (CREAD) transitional committee launched on March 12th, 2018 to oversee the reconstruction efforts (Dominica, G. 2018). My aim in this work, is to introduce the concept of Critical Social Learning Systems to you Ambassador Lambert as a tool the organisation may utilize to assist the country to ‘build back better’ and to share the principles of managing systemic change through action, interaction and systemic inquiry, and how these can improve the capabilities of all concerned. And perhaps more importantly, write these principles into the underlying meta-narrative of the country’s crusade to build back more resiliently.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299419360_Transforming_systems_The_Hawkesbury_initiatives_in_systemic_development
Transforming systems: The Hawkesbury initiatives in systemic development
January 2016South African Review of Sociology 47(1):99-116
DOI:10.1080/21528586.2015.1131192
Richard Bawden, Western Sydney University
Over a period of little more than 15 years, starting in the late 1970s, a small group of academics in the School of Agriculture at the Hawkesbury Agricultural College in Richmond, Australia developed and sustained a unique participative systemic experiential approach to rural development. Their approach came to identify the significance of the transformation of prevailing worldviews as the pre-requisite for transforming systems in the material and social worlds. From this perspective, participative research directed at social development was recognised essentially as a social critical and systemic learning process that represented the transformation of shared experiences (both real and imagined) into collective knowledge to inform responsible, consensual action. In this article, the writer, who was the designated leader of the group through that period, discusses the context, genesis, structure and potential significance of its multi-functional and multi-modal systemic learning approach to transformative development which is systemically inclusive of people and the rest of nature alike.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226053417_Messy_Issues_Worldviews_and_Systemic_Competencies
Messy Issues, Worldviews and Systemic Competencies
January 2010
DOI:10.1007/978-1-84996-133-2_6
In book: Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice (pp.89-101)
Richard Bawden, Western Sydney University
This chapter continues the story of the tradition of systemic praxis that emerged from Hawkesbury Agricultural College in Australia from the late 1970s. While critical social learning systems (CSLS) best describes this ongoing tradition at this present time of writing (2009), the concept of a critical learning system did not appear explicitly in the Hawkesbury literature until the mid nineties (Bawden, 1994). The seeds of this powerful notion however can be traced right back to the seminal papers describing the logic and organisation of the foundations of the initiatives in systems education at that institution (Bawden et al., 1984; Macadam and Bawden, 1985). Details of developments of the Hawkesbury initiatives over subsequent years appear in Bawden (2005) in which an extensive list of references to other publications that trace and describe intermediate developmental stages of the Hawkesbury endeavours, can also be found. While the word ‘social’ is not explicitly included in descriptions of the nature and development of critical learning systems in this endeavour, a strong emphasis on social or collective learning has been an essential feature of the initiative from the outset.
Systems Community of Inquiry 